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Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Baby Blueprint Tutorial

Hi friends! Today I have a little Sizzix tutorial to share with you. I needed to make a bunch of thank you cards and used Tim Holtz new baby blueprint stamps.

The blueprint images are such fun to watercolour and make for quick cards. I got the idea of using them together with the Postage Dots Thinlits dies, and was real happy with the result. The dies cut a square or a rectangle and make dotted impressions in the paper. This tutorial would work with any of the blueprint stamp sets, and with quite a lot of other stamps too.

Start by stamping blueprint images on watercolour paper with Jet Black ink. It is important to use a waterproof ink since we are going to use water. I used all the eight stamps from the Baby Blueprint and Childhood Blueprint sets.

Die cut the images with the Postage Dots dies, use the rectangular die for the taller images and the square one for the rest. These dies work great together with the Sizzix Magnetic Platform. Use this sandwich: Magnetic Platform, Cutting Pad, paper, die facing down, second Cutting Pad.

Here you can see the result. The dotted lines are really cool, and since the die also cuts the square or rectangle, you save time.

I looked at my Distress Inks and decided to use this fun colour combo: Mermaid Lagoon, Cracked Pistachio and Shabby Shutters. Smear them on your craft sheet, add a mist of water to each one and pick up with a paint brush. By varying the amount of water you use, you can get lots of different shades from each ink.

Colour the image, drop darker shades into lighter areas while the ink is still wet.

Continue with all the other images. Leave some areas the white of the paper.

Use the same technique and colour the area around the images with Iced Spruce, also using a dark shade of the ink as a shadow.

When the ink is dry, use an ink blending tool and ink the edges with Black Soot.

I also splattered the images with a bit of Black Soot ink. Smear ink on your craft sheet, mist with water and pick up with a paint brush. Tap the handle of the brush to create splatters.

I die cut sentiments from black cardstock with the Handwritten Love set. This word spells 'lifetime' but I simply cut away the 'time' part.

The ink pools in the debossed dots and gets darker there, while if you look at the dots in the upper right hand corner, you can see that they are lighter where I inked on top with an ink blending tool, since the ink doesn't get into the holes.

The blueprint images were matted on white and black cardstock, or on leftover Core'dinations cardstock.

This was the only image where the descriptive word on the stamp didn't fit inside the die cut square, otherwise the dies and the stamps worked very well together.

I love this piggy bank stamp, so cute, and perfect for watercolouring.

This was the only image where I used a few more colours, otherwise I stuck to the colours I had picked out, which also speeds up the process.

I very rarely make more than one card of exactly the same design, but this way, they are all different, but still quick to make.

And finally the sweet vintage stroller. These blueprint stamps are so well done and all the images are wonderful.

Thank you so much for visiting today! I will have another post for you tomorrow.

Oh my - these look better than professional Anna-Karin. I just LOVE these. I wish I had some young mothers around these days - these would be so fun to do. You are just so talented. Thanks bunches for sharing this tutorial and your beautiful creations. j

Oh wow Anna-Karin, your cards are gorgeous - and so is your colouring! I love the look of the postage stamp markings (still waiting for my die... sigh), they add such an interesting dimension to the blueprint images! Hugs, Anne xx

About Me

Welcome to my blog! I have been doing arts and crafts my whole life, but papercrafting is the one that has totally captured my heart and mind. I started making cards in 2002 and to scrapbook two years later. I enjoy switching between the differently sized space of a card and a layout. My stamps and dies are my absolute favorite tools and I love creating something out of only white paper, stamps and ink, and to try out different techniques.

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The designs, images, and instructions on this blog are for personal use only and may not be distributed or sold in any form without specific permission from Anna-Karin Evaldsson.

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Some of the products I use have been given to me by companies I design for, or sold to meat a discounted rate. This does not affect my content since I only use and blog about products that I like. This site also uses affiliate links, which means that I will receive a small commission when products are purchased from links posted here, at no extra cost to you. It helps me bring you more content and tutorials.